Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

The studio was the real world—or rather, an unreal world which she explored sometimes with Paul when there were outdoor scenes on the back lot and she could make him take a walk during the lunch hour. The maze of streets and alleys there, where one could step from brownstone New York to Elizabethan England in a few seconds, the stranded Pullman on the two-hundred-yard track, the small-town main street with its false-fronted store buildings—all this was fascinating, a symbol (Paul said) of a world in which emotions themselves were false-fronted (“Tell me any picture Majestic ever made that wasn’t”), and in which the symbols of life became substitutes for life itself. “Here on this back lot,” Paul said one day, improvising himself into a tourist guide, “are all the signposts of our civilization, from the little red schoolhouse where you learn to the prison death-house where you burn…” He went on in this fashion, considerably enjoying himself, but she was hardly listening; her mind was preoccupied with a letter she had received from Norris that morning, for he had mentioned in it quite casually that he was getting bored in New York and had thought of coming out to see her, and also to meet Paul. Ordinarily there would have been nothing especially disturbing about this, yet it did disturb her, because she knew that Paul and Norris would not get along, and that an extra burden of peace-making would fall upon her. Frankly, with so much else to do, she could not endure the thought of it. As Paul went on talking she could hear in her mind Norris answering him back and the whole argument that would follow. It would be impossible—that on top of everything else.

Within an hour during an interval between scenes, she scribbled a note from her dressing-room:

“… Darling, don’t think me inhospitable or that I wouldn’t love to see you, but I really don’t think you ought to come out here just now, it wouldn’t be worth your while, I assure you, because I’m busy all day and have to learn lines in the evening for the next day—this job is really work, though you mightn’t think so from all the glamorous stuff you read in the magazines. Please don’t come, therefore—if you did you’d be at a completely loose end most of the time, and I can tell you this is a dull city to wander about on your own. I doubt if I could even get permission for you to visit the picture set—the rules are very strict against anyone who hasn’t a business reason. As for Paul, he hasn’t time for anybody, and as always when he’s directing he’s inclined to be bad-tempered with strangers. I’d hate you to get a wrong impression of him (for he can be very charming at other times), but I’m afraid you would if you met him nowadays. Perhaps later on, some time, when the job’s finished and we can all relax. I’m glad to report that the picture itself is going pretty well—as soon as they ship a print to New York I’ll try to arrange for you to see it in advance in a projection-room…”

Norris sent no immediate answer to this, and for several weeks she was in constant apprehension that every ring from the lobby would announce his arrival.

Then one morning another of his letters came—from Rio de Janeiro.

“… the first few legs of a trip that will end up when and where I don’t exactly know, maybe the bank that father is so keen on shoving me in. You remember I once said that he DEVOTED himself to his job—I can see now it’s the right word for something that does have a faintly religious air about it. Everywhere that we’ve stopped, so far—Havana, Mexico City, Caracas—there’ve been exalted personages meeting us at airports, sometimes even in morning coats and top hats—it’s been a revelation to me what a big shot he is, or must have been during the war, though I still can’t quite fathom what his job was—something to do with government loans and currency, of course, but that doesn’t give away much, and nor does he. But it’s rather fascinating to get an impression of his importance from the way he moves around and meets people—it reminds me a bit of the Acts of the Apostles—you know, CONFIRMING THE CHURCHES. And he does also move in a mysterious way—father, I mean. Perhaps he’s right, after all, and the bank wouldn’t be a bad solution for me—at least for the time being. Oh God, I don’t know—what do YOU think I ought to do? He thinks I’ve given up the medical school idea and perhaps I have —it’s hard, out here, to face the kind of opposition I know he’d put up. This must be all for now, there’s a business conference going on in the next room, so it’s a chance for me to write. Incidentally, Richards is with us, as a sort of valet and general what-not. We stay here a week or two, then go on to Montevideo, Uruguay, the Hotel Bolivar…”

That evening she wrote to both of them, yet there was nothing particular she felt she could say, partly because she suspected Richards might intercept her letters. She therefore assembled another instalment of the chatter she had been sending all along, and to which Austen had not replied by a single line. HIS MYSTERIOUS WAY. The phrase stuck in her mind unhappily, not so much for its wry meaning, as because of her distress that Norris should have been in a mood to employ it. It seemed to signify a return to the cynicism of his boyhood, but now without boyhood as an excuse.

During those days she was immensely glad she had work, and that Paul could magnetize her to it so exhaustingly. The picture was making good progress and even he seemed satisfied, though the deferred problem of the cutting loomed larger on his mind as the job approached completion. One lunch-time, after a morning off, she arrived at the studio to find him stretched out full length on the couch of her dressing-room, eyes closed and a cigar in his hand, declaiming in a way which she took at first to be a speech from some newly minted dialogue but which, after a few sentences, she knew could not be that; it sounded more like an impassioned address to the stockholders of Majestic Pictures Incorporated, imploring them to unseat the existing board and replace them with men who would have greater consideration for art and artists. Actually, as Paul explained readily enough when she broke in on his oration: “I was just getting my thoughts together. We’re going to have a fight, you know, about the cutting. I’ll try not to drag you into it.”

“I’ll try not to be dragged in, but I know I will be.”

“If it’s cut properly it’s a good picture. Not great, but good.”

“Let’s hope it’s a success too.”

He went on smoking. “Oh, by the way, how’s your heart?”

“Not so bad. It’ll be all right if I don’t work too hard.”

“You had nothing to do all this morning.”

“Yes, I had one whole morning—wasn’t that wonderful? What happened while I was away?”

“Writers on the warpath again. You’d think those fellows had written the Bible.”

“What was the trouble this time?”

“The same sort of thing. I couldn’t use any of their barber-shop stuff.”

She knew the scene—it came earlier in the picture than the one in the woodcutter’s cottage, though later in the shooting schedule… Greg, alone, is forced during this stage of his escape to pass through a town by daylight; he knows he is being hunted and that the hunters may already have picked up the scent. As he hurries through the streets he has a sudden impulse to throw off any possible pursuer by disappearing into a shop, and the one that seems most suitable is a barber shop, where he will have an excuse to stay some time. He has a day’s growth of beard and knows the language well enough to ask for a shave. While he is being lathered he sees (through a big mirror) that someone is entering the shop and scanning the faces of customers. This man, Greg feels sure, is looking for him. He figures that his only chance is to do something that will eliminate him from suspicion; and this, in the circumstances, is to do something that will immediately focus attention on him. So with a muttered “Excuse me a moment” to the barber, AND WITH HIS FACE STILL LATHERED, he gets up from the chair, walks right past his pursuer to the rack on which he has hung his overcoat, takes a handkerchief from its pocket, gives his nose a startling blast, and returns to the chair. The pursuer observes him, but (as was intended) automatically puts him out of mind, for surely a man on the run would not deliberately and needlessly draw attention to himself? (Such reasoning being unconscious and therefore all the more reliable, according to Paul.) After completing his scrutiny of others in the shop, the pursuer leaves and the lathered man smiles gently as he submits to the razor.